Newcastle Vs Portsmouth – the pick of this weekend’s action

If ever there was a def­i­n­i­tion for the term ‘squeaky bum time’ it is the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion at New­cas­tle United. The North East giants are in real dan­ger of Pre­mier League rel­e­ga­tion and on Mon­day night they face Portsmouth in a crunch base­ment bat­tle. Pom­pey eased their own fears last week­end with a much needed vic­tory against Bolton, while Newcastle’s woes deep­ened with a 1–0 defeat away at Tottenham.

For New­cas­tle this tie rep­re­sents their first real chance to utilise the impact of stand-in boss Alan Shearer. Big Al has no pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ence of man­age­ment and in my opin­ion his appoint­ment was in part to increase the crowd and noise at St James’ Park. In his first game New­cas­tle faced Chelsea in a game they were never going to get any­thing out of, the next two were away from home and this is the first tie where New­cas­tle have faced an oppo­nent at home they are expected to beat. The New­cas­tle crowd will be right behind their team and there should be a fan­tas­tic atmos­phere at St James’ Park on Mon­day night.

From a Portsmouth point of view they haven’t been in the best form lately but they’ve still man­aged to scram­ble a few points clear of dan­ger. They saw off Bolton 1–0 at Frat­ton Park last week­end but prob­a­bly should have won by a greater mar­gin as Bolton keeper Jussi Jaaske­lainen made a string of fine saves in the first half. For Pom­pey to get any­thing out of this game they’re going to have to silence the home crowd and as we all know the best way to do this is to score an early goal, which could set up a pul­sat­ing encounter.

In terms of the qual­ity on dis­play the game hardly promises to be a clas­sic but it’s a safe foot­ball bet that it will cer­tainly be a pas­sion­ate and hard fought affair. Portsmouth have strug­gled all sea­son, prob­a­bly due to the depar­ture of man­ager Harry Red­knapp who opted to join Spurs at the begin­ning of the cam­paign. For all the tal­ent the New­cas­tle team pos­sess they have very rarely dis­played it this sea­son and that is why they are where they are. How­ever, rel­e­ga­tion bat­tles tend to pro­duce some great matches and I’m hop­ing for that on Mon­day night.